Input sought for park at Hall Mountain

Community members are invited to attend upcoming public meetings to learn more about the use of the Hall Mountain Tract in Macon County as a public park and to submit input for potential uses of the land.

The Hall Mountain tract, once a Cherokee settlement, is 108 acres of forest and open space the tribe bought with help from a federal grant. Tribal leaders plan to develop it as a recreation site, with trails and a picnic pavilion, a demonstration site for traditional Cherokee land management and a resource for traditional artisans.

The tract is six miles north of Franklin and is the backdrop of the historic Cowee Mound site, once the diplomatic and commercial center of the Cherokee people until the arrival of Europeans and early settlers.

The meetings are hosted by the Cherokee Tribal Office of Environment and Natural Resources and will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. Aug. 27 and Sept. 17, at the Cowee School near Franklin, and Sept. 3 and 24 in Cherokee, at a location not yet determined.

The Naturalist's Corner

My family and I made a quick run up to Waterrock Knob on the Blue Ridge Parkway around dusk last Sunday (July 19) to get a peek at some celestial luminaries. Venus and Jupiter joined the waxing crescent moon on the western horizon. They danced and played hide and seek amidst layered clouds whose purple backs touched the night while their bellies bathed in the last yellow and orange rays of the sun falling over the western horizon. It was a beautiful, tranquil setting.